Customer: Branson Ultrasonics
Category: Plastics Joining and Precision Cleaning Equipment
Application: Global Product Development
Background
Founded in 1946, Branson Ultrasonics Corp, an independent division of Emerson Electric Corp, focuses on the design, development, manufacture, and marketing of plastics joining and precision cleaning equipment. More than 50 years in the plastics joining industry have provided Branson with the knowledge and expertise needed to meet the specialized requirements of the markets Branson serves, including automotive, medical, packaging, business and consumer electronics, appliance and textile/film technology.
With more than 1,500 employees and 70 sales offices worldwide, Branson''s resources are substantial. Full manufacturing facilities are located in Connecticut, Canada, Mexico, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Slovakia, China, Hong Kong, and Japan. Additionally, ultrasonic tooling capabilities are found in many of Branson''s regional technical centers.
The Business Problem
To continue company growth and establish a broader reach into other geographic markets, Branson decided to go global.
At the time, Branson''s methods of communicating throughout the global enterprise were phone, fax, email, and face-to-face meetings -- these produced high costs associated with plane tickets, hotel stays, and other travel expenses as well as time delays required to gather individuals together.
Specifically, Branson was in development with a new vibration welder that required input from individuals and teams across the globe -- including Rochester, NY; Dietzenbach, Germany; and Atsugi, Japan.
The company quickly recognized the challenges. The project''s success, and Branson''s ability to meet a tight delivery deadline, depended largely on the ability to gather input quickly from each geographically dispersed development team member and to tap their individual expertise. Due to the wide spectrum of time zones across which development team members were working, and their physical isolation from one another, overall project coordination and communication soon became issues.
Additionally, at the executive level, plant managers and enterprise executives were losing visibility into the development project''s status. Consistent visibility would allow senior managers and Branson executives to use their wealth of product development experience and corporate knowledge to quickly identify and resolve unforeseen challenges.
The Solution
According to Branson''s vice president of engineering, Framework was selected "as soon as they came in the door." Branson had seen no other software vendor on the market that addressed the specific issues the company was looking to solve. Branson was so impressed with ActiveProject''s capabilities that a contract for implementation was signed immediately.
Branson began installing ActiveProject at its headquarters in Danbury, CT, and went live locally in two days. Within a month, ActiveProject was live across the entire vibration welder project team, which included Branson engineers in Connecticut, New York, Germany and Japan -- all working together from a common set of project information such as product specifications, CAD designs and project milestones status. Branson immediately began driving the project through its newly enabled "globalized" product development team.
Using ActiveProject, Branson was able to effectively drive collaboration among global team members and between geographically isolated facilities, allowing the vibration welder project to run 24/7. The result was a 20% reduction in time-to-market.
Simultaneously, ActiveProject gave Branson executives and managers unprecedented project insight -- insight that enabled core design and other schedule-threatening issues to be identified much earlier in the product development and design process. This allowed Branson to avoid false starts and effectively react to issues before they became genuine problems.
The Bottom Line
Based on the success of the vibration welder project, Branson plans to implement ActiveProject companywide, extending the software''s benefits to the entire enterprise and its partners.
Via ActiveProject, Branson Ultrasonics has undergone a global expansion of the enterprise without compromising product quality or time-to-market. The company has actually improved key metrics, reducing time-to-market and product development lifecycles by 20%, and lowering team travel costs by 20%.
ActiveProject has also given Branson''s product development team members real-time connection and an efficient, user-friendly system for transferring complex product-related information, using the Internet, to any geographic location. At the same time, by providing Branson executives timely insight into project progress and milestone status, ActiveProject has reduced product development missteps and project delays.
Finally, by reducing the time and energy product development team members spend pushing paper and pursuing colleagues for information, ActiveProject allows them to now focus their time and energy on creative design issues, fueling product leadership and, in turn, shareholder value.